Week 16 of the Year of Fear:

Morgan’s Fear: #6 Buy New Clothes

This week was really hard for me. As it was, I’d been having a “fat week” (or couple of weeks if I’m honest) so trying to buy new clothes for a body that I don’t much care for was very hard to wrap my head around. I was convinced that anything I tried on would look laughably unflattering on me. I felt like a fool, like I didn’t belong in the store and that everyone else must be wondering why someone as ugly as me was even bothering. So yeah, it wasn’t pleasant.

I chickened out of trying anything on in the store. I was too scared of the girl in the mirror and couldn’t face the disappointment and sadness that would be staring back at me. So I guesstimated the size/fit of a sweater I liked, paid and got the hell out of there.

I think it’s fair to say that, this week, my fear won–or we at least tied. I will have to revisit this one down the road. On the bright side, at least I got a new sweater for my mental pain and suffering.

Chris’s Fear: Shopping for Clothes

I am not a fan of shopping unless it is for bike equipment, and that has nothing to do with it being a fear. I just hate the crowds, the hustle and bustle, the needless spending, all the junk, and all the consumerism for stuff that will most likely last a season then get dumped. But this feeling gets overwhelmed when you add the extra component of my fear of shopping for clothes.

It is not necessarily the trying on the clothes that scares me, but rather the fear of growing out of those clothes. I still remember my waist size back when I was significantly underweight and there is part of me that is constantly comparing myself to that and a sliver of me that wants to see those waist sizes again.

Then I have those thoughts and memories of when I gained the weight back and then some when I was several sizes larger still haunting me. I am afraid that if I buy something then I will automatically put on weight and outgrow it. Magical thinking and a cognitive distortion, I know, but the thoughts still exist and those neurons still fire.

I got several nice pants and shirts that actually fit, but the fear that I will no longer fit them soon still exists. It is something I will have to continually address each time I put them on and send those fears and that energy right back out instead of feeding them.